In its meeting of December 5, 2018, the Commission voted to go forward with three (3) separate bond questions in a special election scheduled for March 12, 2019. Resolution 21R is $22.7 million for infrastructure improvements that look a lot like regular operations & maintenance expenditures. The vote was 5-2, approved. Resolution 22R is for the new police headquarters and other vaguely specified police and fire equipment. The building price has gone up to $72.5 million, and the total for this question of the bond is $77.6 million. The vote was 7-0, approved. Resolution 23R will be a combined single question for park upgrades and new golf course club houses, both at Orangebrook and Hollywood Beach courses. Not to mention pay another $12 million to buy the former Sunset golf course property. The total of all the golf stuff is, let's round off to $50 million. Then comes the park upgrades, etc., which will cost another $14 million.

Thus, just in time for Christmas, the City Staff has come up with a wish list of $164 million worth of goodies to keep them all busy and employed for years to come. With only Mr. Biederman voting 'no' on 2 of the resolutions [kudos to him for his independent thinking], as predicted, the Commission rubber-stamped the Staff's requests without attempting to shave off any of the fat. The "big savings" that was supposed to be achieved by the voters approving a full penny County sales tax did not really materialize. I will be reviewing the individual City slides on all the projects over the next couple weeks and will let you know what I think. Thanks for staying in the loop. We may have lost the election battle, but the war isn't over yet!